Sand is fun. Children play in pits of it. You find it on the beach and make castles out of it. When it gets in your sandwiches, it becomes temporarily annoying.
In the Middle East sand is a fact of life. It's everywhere you look. Sand is the ground, the terrain. Along with the heat, you just deal with it.
People that work in the Middle East's rail sector treat the outsiders' view of sand as slightly bemusing. Undoubtedly the hardest part of building a railway through a desert is sand and heat. How can it not be?
It's a challenge Dr Bashir Al Malik, projects director for the Saudi Railway Company (SAR), is all too familiar with. As one of the few companies to have built a new railway in the Middle East in the last fifty years, he is intimately aware of the disruption sand can cause a railway.
The first part of SAR’s 1,400km North-South railway opened in May 2011. The line is running freight trains carrying phosphate and bauxite from mines in the north of Saudi Arabia, to the port of Ras Azzour on the Arabian Gulf in the south. Next year, after a series of expansions are complete, high speed passenger trains up to 200 km/h will also start running on the line. The finished route will stretch from the King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh to Al Hadithah in the North West of the country, bordering Jordan.
Speaking at an event in Dubai, Al Malik says parts of the North-South Line can completely disappear in less than an hour during a severe sandstorm. “There is no magical solution for sandstorms and sand accumulation. We've done experiments and research in the region and have succeeded at minimising the impact,” he says. “It requires continuous maintenance and cleaning to avoid delays. Then there are the challenges from the heat, temperatures of over 50˚C for over half the year. Most of the network is the middle of nowhere. Just reaching these locations is challenging. Then you add in that communications is at its least in these places.”
Track maintenance in remote and hostile desert conditions is tough work
Specialist cleaning equipment has been developed and is employed, but in some places, such as around switches, there is no alternative but to manually clean the tracks. Fences, walls and dykes to accumulate sand are built along both sides of the most affected parts of the line. The company is also at the early stages of trials to grow vegetation around the track to mitigate sand movement.
SRC is outsourcing infrastructure management and rail operations of the North-South Line. A decision on a contract out to tender is expected by the end of this year. The UK's Network Rail is reported to be the front runner to win the contract. Al Malik says: “We want to outsource all track maintenance in the future. We will be more effective if it is carried out by a mature organisation. We have a lack of availability of qualified people and can eliminate challenges better by working with people who have been running a railway for many years, while we only started a few years ago.”
Compared to other areas of the world, there is virtually no rail network in the Middle East. Historically, only Saudi Arabia and Egypt have any railways, the latter being the region's most extensive at around 6,500km, built as far back as 1852. A number of countries, such as Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, have no rail infrastructure at all. The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) first railway was the Dubai Metro, which opened in 2011, followed by the beginning of testing of freight operations on the 246 km Ethiad Railway in the west of the country in 2013.
Despite the difficulties presented by the local environment, the Middle East is scaling up its railway network fast. Analysts estimate there are around $300 billion of projects, 42,000km of new line, planned in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena). From high speed passenger lines through deserts to light rail in cities, several countries are initiating massive railway construction programs.
Saudi Arabia has the most ambitious rail program in the Middle East. As well as the North-South Line, Riyadh is home to the world's largest transport infrastructure project, a 176km metro being built in just four years. Also being built is a 450 km electric high speed line between Medina and Mecca, called the Al Haramain Line. The route, which follows the Muslim pilgrimage trail, is three quarters complete. It will run Talgo 350 trains at speeds of up to 320km/h and is planned to be fully operational by 2016. In addition a dual freight and passenger line crossing Saudia Arabia from East to West is in the latter stages of planning. The so-called “Landbridge” project is planned to mainly run freight between Jeddah on the Red Sea coast to Riyadh and on to Dammam and Juabil on Arabian Gulf Coast.
Artist's impression of one of the stations being built for the Mecca to Medina Line
The progress of Saudi Arabia’s railway program is being closely watched by other governments in the Middle East that plan to build railways and are keen to see how the technical challenges will be overcome and how the economics stack up. The UAE is planning the second and third phase of the Ethiad Railway. Dubai’s Road Transport Authority (RTA) is opening the region's first tram network next month and is extending its metro system before it hosts the World Expo in 2020. Qatar, which is hosting the World Cup in 2022, is planning more than 15,000km of metro and rail. The first phase of the Doha Metro is due to be opened in 2017, the design of the second phase was recently awarded to consultancy Atkins in a $135 million contract. Oman has a contract to build more than 2,000km of railway out to tender. The project will be diesel powered, double track network. Outside of the Middle East in Africa, Algeria and Egypt are building and extending large rail networks. Morocco’s high speed line, the first in Africa, from Tangiers to Casablanca is said to be 60% complete and is expected to open next year. The line covers more than 300km and will run Alstom trains at speeds of more than 300km/h.
One of the main drivers for the Mena region's rail expansion is to connect remote areas to urban areas. Another is to connect the isolated city states which now pepper the region and evolve them into an economic bloc. Industrially, rail links will enable companies to tap into resources such as oil and gas and minerals more effectively and improve the movement of freight. There is also a pressing societal need to help accommodate a growing population. Underlying these drivers is a sense of growing national identities and pride. Modern countries have rail networks. In a region where skyscrapers and airlines are the symbols of progress and wealth, the lowly rail line has until now been passed over. As more people choose to make the region their home, there is a growing need for mass transit systems for people and goods.
Freight travelling on the North-South railway in Saudi Arabia
Dago Beek, from engineering consultancy Fluor, is the civil engineer design lead on the 1250km Saudi “Landbridge” railway project. The project will see new tracks built from Jeddah in the East to Riyadh and then the upgrading of existing track in the West on to Dammam and Juabil. The idea behind the Landbridge is that moving freight across the middle of Saudi Arabia is more efficient and attractive a proposition to copanies than sailing around the Arabian Peninsula. The line will run mainly freight and some passenger rolling stock. Initially trains will be powered by diesel locomotives, but the line could potentially be electrified for higher speed opertion in the future.
The Landbridge is in latter stages of being designed and is one of the most closely watched projects in the region. The Jeddah to Riyadh alignment is agreed, but the route on from Riyadh to the ports at Dammam and Juabil, which will link the two coasts either side of the coutnry, is “still under discussion”, says Beek. The line will cross through one of the most dynamic areas of sand in the world and dealing with it is a massive challenge. Beek says: “You build, you mitigate and you operate it,” he says. “You could use slabs, which are high capex but cheaper over the lifetime. Hypothetically speaking you could elevate it, one to three metres. The majority of the sand would pass underneath, and you would combine it with active maintenance, using bulldozers under the line to remove sand. Most of the solutions involve building walls and planting vegetation, but they have a limited effectiveness.
“The are also requirements for the ballast and designing the wheel rail interface to minimise the amount of wear and tear on the rail and wheel. There are questions about combining passenger traffic at different speeds with freight and how long will the ballast last.”
Other engineering challenges manifest because of the high temperature variation affecting the materials in the rails and superstructure. Pierre Cherki is senior deputy director of Rail and Infrastructure Sector at consultancy Hill International. The consultancy is involved in several railways across the Middle East, including the Riyadh Metro. He says that heat and sand have a massive impact on rolling stock, particularly air conditioning, increasing operating costs and clogging up filters. “The technical challenges can be solved, components and parts can be made heat resistant and sealed against sand, but these measure all add time and cost to schedules,” he says. “Perhaps between 10-20% in design and operation.”
A monorail is part of the metro network being built in Riyadh
There is also a strong focus on building high speed rail that will go as fast as 350 km/h in the region, a focus that maybe misguided. “I think that is too fast – economically, for safety and reliability,” says Chekri. “300km/h is more reliable and safer. These are big distances, but producing a rail system that runs on ballast at that speed is a huge challenge. The cost doubles for every 50km/h you increase the speed.”
Surprisingly, alongside sand and heat, cost is the main restricting factor in the design of desert railways. The distances the routes cover are huge, usually more than a thousand kilometres. The concrete required to build more than a 1000 km of viaduct to avoid sand dune movement, or to entirely use concrete slabs instead of ballast, would be exorbitantly expensive, even by Middle Eastern standards, as well as time consuming to build. Cost is also the reason that diesel trains are being specified for projects instead of electric, with many lines postponing to electrify at least initially.
Funding for the Landbridge project in Saudi Arabia has not been straightforward. The Saudi government first tried to use a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. This was dropped because the large amount of risk in the project made it unattractive to investors. The situation is similar for urban metros and light rail. The primary purpose of these systems anywhere is usually to ease congestion on urban road networks. Most metros in the world are run at a loss, even the newest in the Middle East. The few that are profitable are so because they substantially increase the value of property near stations. It's estimated that property prices around the Dubai’s metro stations have increased by 150% since it opened.
Beek from project management consultancy Fluor, says: “There are not unlimited funds, not even here. There is lots of talk about using PPP to fund projects. It has the benefit of getting the industry close to the projects, which focuses minds on lifecycle costs and maintenance costs.
Another challenge the region's railway boom shares with railway sector in Europe and else is a lack of resources – both human and natural. Beek says: “Having all the right people in all the right places for the next 15-20 years is a real challenge here. There is fierce competition for people internationally. There needs to be an overall approach to the problem by the Gulf Cooperation Council, or there will be delays. There may also be issues with the availability of good ballast and the procurement of rolling stock.”
One of the Talgo 350 high speed trains that will run
on the Mecca to Medina Line
Most people with knowledge of the Middle East's railway plans agree that an overall approach is an essential part of the mix, both to ensure a lack of resources doesn't delay projects and to ensure interoperability between railways in different countries.
Chekri, from Hill International, says that there is great opportunity in the Middle East when developing high speed links and metros from scratch, instead of overlaying on top of old rail networks. Careful planning can improve interoperability, between different transport modes and between railways in different countries. The development of regional standards for track, signalling, and electrification, like Europe's TSI standards, would aid this. He says: “It's important not just technically but also operationally.”
However progress at setting up a much mooted Gulf Coopertion Council (GCC) Rail Authority, to oversee such matters at a Federal level between the six GCC countries, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, have been slow. A management contract for a consultancy to advise on the institutional structure and powers of the GCC Rail Authority is expected to be announced soon. Saudi Arabia is also building specialist railway technical colleges to train staff.
This is a strategy also being employed by the UK government to train workers and engineers to build HS2, the 500km London to Manchester and Leeds line that is planend to be complete by 2030. There are some problems shared across the world by large railway projects then, but some unique ones too. Leaves and snow on the rails in the UK, or sand and heat in Saudi Arabia. Whichever you choose, engineers are always moving something out of the way for the latest and greatest railways.